Unveiling the Future of In-App Payments in Europe: The Evolution of app Stores, Andrew Christodoulou

[Music] [Music] [Music] I would like to uh move forward with the monetizer track now we have I think two or three sessions left before the end of the day uh I'd like to introduce our next soloist yeah um we've got a talk about unveiling the future of inapp uh payments uh in Europe the evolution of

app stores and to give us that talk it's Andrew from worldline uh so come on up Andrew Round of Applause for our speaker so my name is Andrew and I'm a global business development manager at wline at w line is a Global Payments leader with processing over 43 billion transactions per year and we're currently ranked number one in Europe and number four worldwide and the worldland team and I thought we would come here today and meet meet with all of you and kind of discuss about what's changing in the Ina purchase Ina payment space in Europe and how you can leverage that so is everybody with me good so imagine this you're at home in your pajamas you're on the couch and there's a random sitcom playing in the background

but you're not really paying attention because you're playing a mobile RPG game and while you're doing that you get a message and it's your friend Lisa and she wanted to ask you a question so you exit the game and go on the question and you see this hey can I pay with my payment app in the app store to get more gold so what Lisa wants to do she wants to pay with her payment app in the same RPG game that you're playing as well to get that gold and use it in order to obtain a better armor that has more power but you see this question and then immediately you start thinking Lisa you can just look it out with the internet but you love her you've been friends for a while so you really want to help her out so you pause for a moment and then you start thinking and realize that if you if we're talking about the the last 15

years in the App Store space the payments part of it so in I purchases has always been the same right they have always been the same but actually in the coming months in the European Union Market things are said to change and Lisa given the fact you know that she's based somewhere in the European Union she'll actually be able to do this and use the payment app to get that gold and use it to get the armor isn't that amazing I mean this is the first time that this is going to happen but before we get there before we really really dig deep on this topic first we're going to look at Global mobile game spending and the different types of monetization that we currently use in the space so looking at the past few years Global mobile game consumer spending has has been steadily

increasing peing in 2021 at $15 billion do 2021 if you all remember it was an interesting year we still had covid lockdowns we were all at home watching TV playing games some exercising there was all these different things so this peak could be attributed to a large extent to the pandemic but we can see that the next few years 2022 2023 it has started to stabilize reaching stable levels so we have to compare really 2023 to 2020 to really see that it has been growing still and when it comes to mobile game revenue streams at the moment right we only have three that we combine or use individually we have in our purchases that stand at 48.2% most most used then paay up downloads of 37.8% and then we have purely ads based

at 14% and actually uh this Fascination this like extensive use of in purchases began a long time ago and that is that day where Steve Jobs as we all know went on stage and he announced the launch of the first I I phone so a year after this happened in 2009 Apple actually introduced the first iteration of Ena purchases then Google did the same then Apple announced the following year support for subscriptions but only for content-based apps then Google did the same but the real change when it comes to in purchases and this Revenue split

happened in 2016 which is again is not that long ago and in this year this was the year where both app stores changed the revenue split model from 7030 70% going to the developers and 30% go into the app stores to 8515 under a condition of course and that condition was only if a user was subscribed to this app for over a year but anyway the space continue to grow reaching $235 billion for both app stores and then we were set for another change again for this Revenue split and that is in 2021 both app stories decided to reduce the fees of the traditionally charged so the 30% down to 15% again under a condition only and if this developers earned less than 1 million so a lot of changes have happened actually since the launch of

the App Store and the first iteration of un payments and through this development that we see here in this key years we're actually set for another change focused though on the European Union Market so the next change comes from a law and this law is called the digital markets act or dma for those that have heard of it already and this law is aimed at Big Tech it's aimed at The Gatekeepers the one that have the largest market share and control the market and a few other criteria that were created by the European Union to identify which ones have the most uh control over the market and it started in 2022 and he said to be fully applicable this year on the 6th of March 24 days before my birthday that's how I remember it um so cool this is nice all right dma

that's nice but what does that actually mean this means that for the first time ever you'll be able to tap into some of that Revenue that has traditionally been going to the App Stores you'll be able to leverage payment methods that have never been put forward for a mobile game players before and we're talking about all kind of types of payment methods could be peer-to-peer apps digital payments mobile wallets anything you name it anything your users like using and anything they have accessible and right here the team put a list just to come here and show to you where this currently stands and we see on the map and in the list of countries this is very EU focused I need to really really specify this is very specific for the European Union Market and for those that have heard and I've heard a lot today at the event about the 20 27%

change uh that happened in Apple App Store this is only applies for the US right the European Union Market is different we're still waiting on how this will look like but we know that things are going to change and they're going to change really fast and of course in order to get to this in order to reach you know this point where you can actually leverage these new payment capabilities you're going to need a trusted knowledgeable payment partner just like wordline you're going to need someone to help you really navigate this space because looking at it since the beginning of time things have been the same unchanged so having to go through all this will most likely cause a headache but through all of this and this headache there will be a new opportunity an opportunity where you can

really increase the quality of service and keep your cost low and personalize the payment Journey continuously offer your Gamers every single payment method that they have accessible or want to use and on top of that you'll be able to use payment insights and imagined before so if you see that something is going wrong you can use another payment method to compensate for it you can use anything your users like to pay with and ultimately at the end of the day you know your happy Gamers they result in happy payers plus this amazing demo that the team uh put put together back home the warline team so let's go back to the beginning you're back at home you're in your pajamas you playing the mobile RPG

game sit on your cup of tea you're on the couch and then Lisa send you a message so you read the message Lisa wants to buy more gold in the App Store she wants to use her payment app use that gold to obtain an armor that has more power but she wants to use her payment app this is how it's going to look like Lisa will have to go to the counter where the gold is then she has to choose how much gold she wants to buy then when she chooses the amount she'll be forwarded in the game into two different ways of payment one will be of course the one that's native to the App Store and the other one will be the one by the payment provider just like wordline then if Lisa chooses the one by wordline then she'll be able to use her payment app she'll be able to use the

way that she wants to pay with but as a user personally speaking as a gamer this is simply fascinating because For the First time you'll be able to use your local card or your local payment app so anything that you have accessible and right in front of you which I think is really really amazing but as the industry has continued to grown reaching levels you know going from those really simple games into these re games with fully flesh story story lines right now I strongly believe that now we are set for a very radical change for in up purchases in up payments and this change will really shape how things are going to be in the next few years thank you all for joining thank you for really listening to this this is really important and things are set to

change and I cannot stress that enough if you have any questions happy to chat right now this is also a QR code to my LinkedIn uh profile you want to connect right now or you know we can chat now after the event and uh yeah thank you for listening and enjoy the rest of the [Applause] event do we have any questions does anyone have any questions about uh uh uh about what we've just seen oh there a question I think I saw a couple of hands going up that we good yeah um part of your uh the feature that you you mentioned is you could pay for uh apps in in game with in purchases is that assuming that Google and Android uh via their um Android implementations would offer an interface for that sorry can you speak a little bit I I wasn't able to hear it sorry um yeah uh part of your future that you theor that you explained was um uh you can purchase you could

make purchases in app um in the application um are you assuming that um Google will make Android uh apis uh that allow for that or would it be like you go to the browser and you made the purchase yeah actually it's already there the one of Google right it's called um user Choice billing so that's already possible and actually Spotify if I'm not mistaken has already tried the product and they were pretty happy with it so these already is already possible so you can actually do it right now yeah yeah it's called user Choice billing yeah just for Android though right Google Play yeah any other questions anything uhk you'd like to know anything we missed out or anything uh else any other questions for for Andre what are you looking for here at Pocket Gamer connects are you hoping to meet with uh developers looking looking for a

solution like this for their games is that the your yeah meeting yeah basically the changes that are happening right now in the you Market these are the ones that we really want to focus on you know because this is going to be critical when it comes to revenue generation for all these different kinds of mobile game companies because you can tap into this Revenue that you've never been able to tap into before so this is what we're here to do today to chat with everybody and just discuss you know all these things that are changing yeah and yeah whether we can be of assistance of any sorts really yeah that's great and you loads of detail in your presentation I like it was interesting to see the variation across the globe as well that a lot of the things we're talking about aren't Universal right now yeah for sure I mean uh it's very specific to the EU right now yeah yeah and the things that we heard about the US recently we're not great news but you know it's a step forward and it's something that uh will continue to change so yeah yeah absolutely great uh um so is there any further questions for for Andrew if not I know it can be very difficult to put your hand up in front of everyone and ask a question so I would suggest oh we've got think we've got one at the

back I couldn't see I was going to say just before we take that if you have a a question you can always ask Andrew a question through meet to match as well uh sorry yeah go for it hi there um just a question about all the different payment providers that you know we've seen a lot of them today um how do we how do we choose you know what what makes one payment service better than another what's what's the USP for your service for example yeah like I said uh it really depends what you're looking for yeah like I said at the beginning we are currently ranked number one in Europe and number four worldwide for a reason you know so it really depends what you're searching for if you're searching for our Global coverage if you're searching for you know trusted partners and all these things then we can obviously we can do that for you you know because we have the credibility and we have been collaborating with a variety of Partners within the gaming industry since the conception of the company so yeah it really really depends what you're looking for but we can obviously chat about it later as well